Mike came back from that first job in an odd heat, feeling invincible—the man he was meant to be—and told Rhonda that, if he ever went down, he’d hand up her lover as the man who’d taught him everything. Cavanaugh had to protect him then, to protect himself, protect Rhonda. He began tipping Mike off on the robbery investigations, staying away from Rhonda once the surveillance began but getting messages through by using the guy who washed dishes at their restaurant as a go-between. That went on until Rhonda’s grand jury appearance, after which she told Mike she’d dime him out herself if he didn’t stop, she didn’t care who got hurt. And Mike obliged her—until Christmas Eve.
He missed it, that nervy heat when he slipped in, pointing the gun. The fear. The begging.
As soon as he left the house for Paradise Valley, Rhonda picked up the phone, dialed Cavanaugh, told him she was leaving for good, she’d had it. He told her to wait, he’d be right over. They meant to be gone by the time Mike got back but—here again I’m not sure what to believe—he surprised them, slipping into the house unnoticed. It was self-defense, if you looked at it right, though Cavanaugh knew better than to take that to trial.
But all of that was yet in the telling as I stood there in the bedroom doorway. The dog ignored me for once, still whimpering, its ears pricked up. It was Rhonda who stared right at me.
“You’re the one whose wife walked out,” she said finally. She left the rest hanging, but her voice was accusing. She wouldn’t be gloated over, not by the likes of me.
I don’t know how to explain it. Despite her contempt, despite everything, I felt for her. And I could afford to be gracious, not because I was different or better or even because it was Christmas. I remembered my daughter’s words, whispered in my ear:
Don’t be sad, okay?
I had a piece of something back I’d thought was lost for good. It felt a little like being forgiven.
“My wife had good reason to leave,” I said, thinking:
Why lie?
But Rhonda just turned away. With a soft, miserable laugh, she said, “Like that’s all it takes.”
I lingered awhile, waiting her out, but she said nothing more, just leaning down now and then to console the dog.
With profound thanks to Detective Jay Pirouznia, Tempe PD (Retired).
W
hat it is is it’s hot.
Beads of sweat pop onto Jerry’s forehead the second he steps out the door of his motel room. Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200, Go Directly to Jail, my man. Like there is no transition period between the air-conditioned chill of the room and the outside world of Phoenix—it’s just like
wham
, the heat hits you like a punch in the chest.
Last night the noisy old air conditioner in the cheap motel had forced him to choose between not sleeping because of the banging of the machinery and not sleeping because of the stifling heat. He’d chosen not sleeping because of the noise.
August in Phoenix, Jerry decides as he walks out onto Van Buren, is a bitch.
Who comes to Phoenix in August?
Well, me, he thinks.
And Benny Rosavich.
And what’s Rosavich doing here in the summer, anyway? God knows the slick prick has money, he could be anywhere, why did he have to pick the freaking desert? Aren’t Russians supposed to like snow, and sleighs and ice hockey and shit like that? Go after an Israeli, you expect to find him in the desert, not a Russian.
Maybe he’s a Russian Jew.
Jerry forgot to ask.
Like it matters.
This stretch of Van Buren is empty at noon. A ghost town. Nobody is out there who doesn’t have to be. One or two meth whores with shriveled chins like crones on the slow stroll, trying to stay on the shady side of the street. Ain’t no shady side at noon, ladies, Jerry thinks. The sun is straight above and burning down on our heads like the glare of an angry God. Burn right through you.
The pro he picked up last night wasn’t bad. Skinny with no tits, but the price was right for a half-and-half. Guys who’d been down here before had told him Van Buren was thick with working girls, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting one in the ass, but there hadn’t been so many. She was all right, though, she did the dirty deed. Strictly speaking, it was against established procedure, picking up a girl, especially a pro, but he has a hard time sleeping the night before a piece of work and it helps to get the snake charmed.
He walks down the street toward the motel they told him Rosavich is at. He’s at a motel on Van Buren, you can’t miss it. Hate to tell you, boys, but there ain’t nothing but motels on Van Buren, a lot of them closed and boarded up, though. This was supposed to be a happening place back in the day, but that must have been a lot of days ago. He’s been on the street, what, two minutes, and the back of his one-size-too-large baby-blue polo shirt is already soaked. Nice. He takes off his ball cap and wipes his brow with the back of it. A Yankees cap, because it’s distinctive, people remember it. Let them go chasing around New Yaaawk for him. He’ll toss it in the nearest dumpster on his way out. He has uncles would beat him half to death they saw him with a Yankees cap on, but this is a do-what-you-gotta-do-to-get-by world.
Long freaking walk to the Tahiti Inn. The freaking Tahiti Inn. Tahiti?! Ain’t that like an island with swaying palm trees and cool ocean breezes? Brown-skinned women with small firm breasts and coconut drinks in their hands? What is it, like a joke or something?
He guesses he could have taken a cab but that just leaves one more witness. Cops always talk to cabbies and he already had one who brought him in from the airport. Better than renting a car, though, that just leaves a paper trail and more people who’ve seen you. So better to walk, even in this heat.
Couldn’t have done this in the wintertime, right? When the snow is blowing sideways into your eyes, your toes feel like they’re going to snap off, and a flight to fun in the sun is just what the doctor ordered? Sit out by the pool with a piña colada in your mitt and pity the poor bastards scraping frost off their windshields back home? Noooo, you have to come in freaking August.
They say it’s a dry heat, but so is an oven. He reaches around and feels the handle of the pistol tucked into the back of his jeans. It’s still there, nice and snug. Last night he’d stopped by the pawn shop they’d told him to go to, and the counter guy slipped him the gun, no problem. A nice clean work piece that won’t hold a print.
He walks for another minute and then stops in his tracks.
Jerry feels dizzy for a second. The sun is so bright and hot it drains the color out of the world. Like the whole world goes white.
A whiteout, he thinks.
Abe likes the sun.
He goes out onto the little balcony—just big enough for a lawn chair—at the motel where he has a permanent room on the second floor. He’s bare-chested with faded lemon-yellow Bermuda shorts, white socks, and sandals. He likes to feel the sun on his chest. The docs have lectured him about skin cancer but for crying out loud he’s eighty-three years old and the prostate is going to kill him before the cancer will.
Old men get cold, and the sun feels good.
Abe feels like he’s always cold these days, what with his bum circulation. His feet are always chilled, and his chest is like an old icebox. Death itself. He sits down with his grapefruit juice and vodka and looks out at the street. Nothing much to look at now, but it was something back then. It’s still beautiful in the movie that rolls through his head in bright old Technicolor.
Back then, when you drove into Phoenix from the east, this was the main street, the highway, and the motor hotels lined it on both sides. Beautiful places too. He remembers the names—the Rose Bowl, the Winter Garden, the H&R, Camp Joy. Pretty places with free ice water and swimming pools. One of them—which one was it? he asks himself, cursing his memory—had a big-screen outdoor movie you could sit and watch at night. Those soft desert winter nights.
They were good times. Him and a few of the boys would come to relax, get away from it all, and you could do that in those days because Phoenix was an open city, no funny business allowed, no blood spilled. It was good to come down from Detroit, especially when they were fighting it out back then, the Jews and the guineas. Good to come down and soak up some sun, have a few drinks, a few laughs, eat Mexican food you couldn’t get back then in Detroit. Get laid.
The women in those days, Abe thinks as he watches the two sad whores across the street. Secretaries, receptionists, and nurses would come down on the train from Detroit, Chicago, Omaha, and they were here to let their hair down and have a good time too. You’d loosen them up with a few drinks and take them to eat at Bill Johnson’s Big Apple where there was a chance at seeing a movie star or two who would maybe recognize you from Las Vegas and come over and say hello and that would cinch the deal with the girl, all right. You could bring her back to your room at the Deserama and in the morning lie in bed and watch her roll her stockings back up her long legs and you’d say, “See you, kid,” and there would be no complications.
Now he remembers bringing Estelle here on their honeymoon, on the way to the Grand Canyon. That was just down the street at the old Sands. He remembers her perfume, the way her black hair touched her shoulders, how she took her slip off and hurried under the sheets. But she was game in bed, Estelle—bucked like a champion. That was a long time ago, he thinks, when a breeze would give you a hard-on, and now Estelle is gone and the Sands is a homeless shelter.
A homeless shelter.
He leans back in his chair, closes his eyes, and feels the sun on his face.
Her feet sweat in the tight shoes.
What’s bothering Evie more than anything right now. Her feet are swollen from the heat and the damn shoes are too tight anyway. Red Fms and skintight jeans that grab her harder than a fourteen-year-old boy in the back of a car. Sunlight glistens off the sequins on the body shirt that shows her stomach, not as tight as it used to be after two kids.
What she’s doing out on VB at noon, two kids, a pimp, and an ice jones to support, you put in the hours. Got popped by vice just two nights before too—her third bust so she’s headed for a stretch and needs to make some before she goes. They gonna take her kids too, ’less she can get her auntie to take ’em first. Except auntie ain’t gonna take no kids unless they come with a little cash attached. She got troubles of her own, her own rent to pay, and the liquor store don’t give the vodka away.
Evie keeps an eye out for the cops. They’re everywhere these days—“cleaning up Van Buren.” They already closed three of the motels where she took johns. The rest are closing on their own, anyway. Won’t be nothing left of VB soon, it’s just fading away.
Van Buren, Van Buren.
Used to be a girl could make a living here, you call it living. She looks down the street and sees the guy coming. Black ball cap, big old blue polo shirt hanging loose over new jeans. One more middle-aged white guy trying to hide his thinning hair and spare tire. She’s looking for a john to jack and he could be the one. Take him in the alley behind the dumpster and while he’s busy thinking about her mouth on his thing and all those sweet noises she’ll be making that wallet will pop out his back pocket like that button on the turkey when it’s ready at Thanksgiving. Even if he wakes up, what’s he going to do? She has a blade in her back pocket and can fillet him like a fish. Johns don’t go to the cops neither, because what they gonna say? Cops will put in about one second flat, worrying about that wallet. What you deserve, you go looking to nut on Van Buren. Take that back to New York. “You wanna date, honey?”
Man keeps walking, like he can’t see her, like she’s invisible. She walks alongside him.
“Honey, you wanna date?”
“Not today.”
“I’ll show you a
good
time.”
“I’m sure you would.”
“You can be sure.”
“Another time, baby. I’m busy.”
I ain’t your baby, baby. I ain’t nobody’s baby, baby baby baby. “What other time, baby? I’m out here all day.”
The man just keeps walking. Walking and sweating. Maybe she’ll see him on the way back from wherever he’s going, he’s so busy.
Her feet hurt.
Itching in the heat.
Jerry finds the Tahiti Inn.
Just in time too, because another two minutes he might have passed out. Last freaking job I take in the desert, he thinks, in the summer anyway. They want some guy taken off the roster in Phoenix in August, they can call somebody else.
The money is good, anyway. Do the job, hit the airport, fly back to Providence, and take Marcy on a little weekend to Block Island, like she’s been bugging him. Not much to ask, and she’s a good baby, Marcy, she don’t make too much trouble.
He walks past the big sign with the goofy tiki mask. The main office is shaped like a Tahitian hut, or what they think it looks like, anyway. Jerry doesn’t know—he’s never been to Tahiti or even Hawaii. Maybe he should spend a dollar and take Marcy to Hawaii, might not be a bad idea to get a little distance after this. Sit on the beach, watch the girls do the hula, maybe get Marcy fired up a little to lose those last five pounds.
Room 134.
They told him Rosavich is in 134.
Good. No stairs to go up or down.
He finds 134, pulls out the gun and holds it behind his back, then knocks on the door.
Abe dances with Estelle.
In his waking dream, the sun having lulled him into semisleep. In this dream that is not a dream, he’s in the old El Capri Ballroom, whirling her around, little dots of perspiration on her neck as she looks up at him and smiles. She wears a cornflower-blue dress and a string of pearls.
They had come down to Phoenix after the thing with Sol Hirsch went bad. Poor, stupid Sollie, hanging from the rafter in that loft while they took baseball bats to him. He finally told them what they wanted to know, but Abe had felt sick after that, and tired, so he’d said to Estelle, “Let’s take the new Buick down to Phoenix, stay on Van Buren. Do some dining, some dancing, get a tan.” She wouldn’t sit out in the sun, though, she said she liked her skin white and so did he. The few minutes she would sit out with him she’d wear that big floppy sun hat, even in the pool; she did the breast stroke and kept her head above the water. Then she’d go into the room, into the cool dark, and read paperback books and nap until he was ready to go to dinner.